TransmissionUK CIC

TUK Store is going to be a venue for the Rivington Street Festival!

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:55:58 +0000

This year sees the launch of the Rivington Street Festival, a day celebrating music and art at the epicentre of London’s creative scene.

The day is going to be jam packed with music curated by local promotors and DJs, art exhibitions, demonstrations and film screenings curated by galleries and boutiques throughout Shoreditch. There will be an open air gallery, spoken word, a market selling products from local designers and two stages entertaining the crowd throughout the day.

As a venue, TUK Store will play its own specially curated music and have a stall in the market, with special promotions for the day at the stall and in the store itself.

It’s going to be a thoroughly enjoyable street party and we can’t WAIT to be involved!

The Rivington Street Festival is on Monday 4th June. More details and registration for tickets on their website.

My Journey with Complementary Therapy and TransmissionUK CIC

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:59:49 +0000

I had, for the past 13 years, been receiving complementary therapy treatments as a way of dealing with the hectic pace of life as a legal temp secretary before bereavement knocked on my door. I also had been organising group trips to spas for 12 years, after a simple weekend away to indulge in some relaxation turned into regular visits as a way of taking some time out from the everyday stresses of work life. This small venture grew and a group of 16-20 women both friends and relatives ages ranging from 30-71yrs old have spent the last 12 years going on four night spa breaks across the UK during the October half terms. The group has grown due to the benefits of both the spa locations and the complementary healthcare treatments; having treatments and the social interaction of the trips has enabled each and every one of us to gain a really positive sense of well being.

Following my husband’s death I became heavily involved in the setting up of a project called the Drop in Bereavement Centre with a group of widows in Newham, East London. The Centre has been fundamental in providing help and support to individuals who have been bereaved, by enabling individuals and families to access through a number of beneficial services to their needs. Currently at the Centre we provide bereavement counselling and small support group networks, coupled with a series of health and well being programmes, including complementary therapy treatments such as Reiki, Reflexology, Indian Head Back Neck and Shoulder Massage.

Losing someone you love and coping with the bereavement is a devastating experience and one that continues throughout an individual’s life. Coping mechanisms are determined by the support from family in helping to deal with the practical responsibilities of dealing and facing life ahead now as “one” when previously there was “two” and the emotional difficulties lying ahead. Transmission UK has enabled volunteer staff members and service users at the Drop in Bereavement Centre to access a wide range of complementary therapy treatments offered by an experienced professional therapist.

Throughout my husband’s illness and after his eventual death to stomach cancer I continued receiving treatments such as Reiki, Reflexology and full body massage. The treatments I have experienced and continue to experience has enabled me to deal with the inexplicable hurt and anger following death. Reflexology has enabled me to deal with my abdominal medical complexities and has helped to alleviate my gynaecological problems; Reiki has brought me a sense of pure relaxation and has helped me deal with the challenging everyday role now classified by society as a single parent in bringing up my boys (aged 16 and 9yrs at the time of their father’s death) and now young men aged 22 and 16. I have gained inner strength and re-balance in my life and undoubtedly these treatments have helped me engage in a much more understanding and spiritual place and acceptance of my loss. There have been a number of service users who through TransmissionUK have been able to obtain this sense of peace and healing through their own stages of grief and for some being able to “sleep better” after sessions of complementary therapy and stop taking sleeping tablets is evidence of the true benefits of these therapy treatments.

The aim of the Drop in Bereavement Centre is to be able to continue expanding its programme of Health and Well being through complementary therapy treatments, working with Transmission UK in making it possible for bereaved individuals to be able to access at least 6 consecutive sessions of free therapy treatments with the offer of continued low cost complementary treatments as a way of maintaining a sense of well being in giving back to themselves.

We do hope our relationship with TransmissionUK will continue to bring about the provision of other therapists for the near future for others to be able to experience and bring healing and re-balance to our growing number of service users to the Drop in Bereavement Centre. I thank you for being in a position to unquestionably say that complementary therapy treatments has played a big part in bringing me into the place where I am at now.

Olive Brade (co-founder of the Drop In Bereavement Centre, Newham)

Gift ID – 3

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:43:01 +0000

TransmissionUK have been providing reflexology to users of the Drop In Bereavement Centre in Newham for several months now. The purchase of a complementary therapy Gift Tag means we have been able to provide another session to a person using the Centre.

Matilda speaks below about her experience of reflexology and the Centre.

‘After I lost my husband I could not cope with life. I was referred to the Drop In Bereavement Centre by Newham Psychological Services. I started six weeks of counselling which helped me with my depression. I was taught to understand and stop blaming myself and God for taking my husband. I had help with the paper work and will advice. The reflexology and reiki have helped me also, relaxing my mind and body. I would like to thank TransmissionUK who have made this possible. I’ve made friends and we all talk about the bereavement and try to help one another. The centre welcomes everyone with open arms. The kindness and the love they gave me helped me find myself again, I’m on the mend.”

The customer who bought Gift ID 3 unfortunately didn’t leave their details for us to contact them, but hopefully they will check back to see how their gift has benefitted Matilda.

TUK CIC is now funding massage therapy for One Housing Group

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:45:42 +0000

We have just come to the end of a very successful trial period at the Kings Terrace project which has received such positive feedback we are continuing!

Massage therapy is being provided for residents of One Housing Group’s supported housing project. The residents have a history of mental health needs and live in specialist residential accommodation for at least two years. The accommodation is designed to support individuals with mental health needs to move into independent accommodation, access the appropriate mental health services and realise their potential through rehabilitation.

Taster sessions of complementary therapy had been provided at the project, but in order to offer longer-term complementary healthcare, TransmissionUK was asked for funding. We are incredibly happy to be funding this project, especially as so far it seems to be such a success.

As an addition to providing massage therapy, we have will also be providing yoga for small classes at the Kings Terrace Project with the hope of extending this throughout the One Housing Group. You can read about the provision of yoga for people with mental health issues in a previous blog post, “Yoga and Mental Health”, written by Carolina who will be running these classes.

TUK CIC are funding a new project! Complementary Therapy for Fibromites, a support group for people with Fibromyalgia

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:50:20 +0000

Fibromites and Huntingdon MS Therapy Centre

TransmissionUK is funding Huntingdon MS Therapy Centre to provide low cost complementary healthcare treatments to members of a Fibromyalgia support group in Huntingdonshire. The group, Fibromites, provides an understanding and friendly environment for people suffering with Fibromyalgia. The group meets twice a month, inviting speakers to share information about the condition, as well as organising events and activities to encourage social interaction.

The group contacted TransmissionUK due to an interest in the benefits of complementary therapies. Currently we are funding one session per week at the Huntingdon MS Therapy Centre for the Fibromites.

For more information about these organisations, visit their websites:

Fibromites
Huntingdon MS Therapy Centre

TransmissionUK would like to thank the Hunts Forum of Voluntary Organisations for representing and recommending us to Fibromites.

An insight from one of our therapists #3: Victoria Bampfield-Hammond

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:22:16 +0000

“I do a lot of my work with clients living in residential care homes within the community. They are often adults with autistic spectrum disorders, learning difficulties and other complex needs; people who have very challenging behaviours and require extremely good teams of people to help support and care for them.

They are a group of individuals which can respond really well to art and sensory based activity. Sometimes an individual may have difficulty with remaining focused for even small amounts of time, problems with coordination and communication. My aim is to tackle some of these obstacles to development and enable ‘moving on’ with a fun and person centred approach. We use a range of materials, from the usual – paints, clay, paper mache, pens and sponges – to the less usual – sticks,wooden spoons and washing up brushes. Projects can be anything from ‘mark making’ to puppet making, models, painting, textiles, or pure sensory expression.

Recently I have seen a number of brilliant personal developments manifest in session, which is hugely heartening to both myself as the workshop facilitator and staff working with the client. Cornwall is where I am based and there have been huge cuts to funding in the county, but thanks to TransmissionUK/HealingUK I am able to provide workshops to people who are unable to afford this type of therapeutic activity.

It really does make a difference and I am constantly lost for words, with both the special and amazing people I meet as clients, and the refreshing approach they have to learning and development.”

Book Review by Steven Colbourne: ‘Descartes’ Error’ by Antonio Domasio

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:42:30 +0000

Descartes’ Error was recommended to me by my psychotherapist. In my psychotherapy sessions in recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion about body systems (e.g. the autonomic nervous system; the limbic system), and feeling that I don’t really have a grasp of the more complex language that relates to the biological and neurological workings of the body and brain, I asked my psychotherapist if he could recommend any good introductory books – particularly in the domain of neuroscience. He immediately suggested Descartes’ Error, explaining that it was a key book in the field, and the next day I purchased a copy from Amazon. The book explores the relationship between mind and brain and body. It is not a simple book in terms of the language used, but it is well written in the sense of containing simple sentence and paragraph structures. This allowed me to get a general sense of the ideas being discussed, even if it was difficult to understand a lot of the technical vocabulary. In the first part of the book, there is quite a lot of explanation about brain regions and systems. I found this very difficult to follow, and the many diagrams depicting the brain in various different ways didn’t help at all – not only were the low quality black and white images difficult to see, but the accompanying descriptions were too complex for the novice reader. As a result, I found myself reading the rest of the book with little or no understanding of what terms like “prefontal cortex”, “hypothalmus”, and “amygdala” were actually referring to. The narratives of the case studies described in the first part of the book were easier to follow. The author describes the case of a man called Phineas Gage, who suffered an injury whilst undertaking engineering work. An unexpected explosion led to Gage’s brain being pierced by a metal rod. The accident led to brain damage, and a significant part of the book is dedicated to trying to unravel what the brain damage meant for Gage’s life, in terms of his relationships, his working life, his well-being, and his emotions. As well as the case of Phineas Gage, there are many other case studies that the author draws upon as he tries to explain how brain damage can affect human response to real life situations. The impression one gets is that this pursuit is a bit of a guessing game, and nowhere is the impression given that there is much clear evidence for the way brain and emotions interact. There are many hunches and hypotheses presented, but the author is quick to point out that neurobiology is a field in it’s infancy and there is still a vast amount of progress to be made. The essential aim of Descartes’ Error is to readdress the way that we see the relationship between the mind and our emotions. Rene Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, envisaged a clear divide between the mental faculties and the emotions. He famously said “I think, therefore I am”, which shows the primacy he afforded to thinking within the experience of self. Domasio’s philosophy is rather different. He uses his own theory, the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, to attempt to persuade the reader about the ways in which mind states and thoughts, and emotional states, are intimately interlinked. My understanding of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis is that the body produces a gut feeling, which is like a warning sign, when one perceives that unpleasantness might be experienced in a future scenario. For instance, if I am discussing my new medication with a doctor and she mentions that I may experience nausea or vomiting as a result of taking the pills, I would most likely experience a bodily reaction as I heard about this, and this reaction would anticipate the ill effects. I would momentarily experience an unpleasant “gut feeling”, which would act as a warning and may help me to make choices, such as whether to take a lower dose of the medication in order to avoid too many of the unpleasant side effects. The gut feeling is a somatic marker. Healthy individuals experience these somatic markers all the time, but what do they tell us about the connection between mind and body? Clearly, they tell us that there is a close correlation between the two. One might perceive that the connection is so close that it is difficult to imagine disembodied thought, as envisaged in the “brain in a vat” scenario that the author describes. Domasio’s theory doesn’t to me seem radical in any way. But on the other hand, he may well be challenging the assumptions on which a great deal of modern brain medicine are based. From what Domasio writes, it seems that the brain is often viewed by scientists as an entity in isolation from the rest of the body, and this is surely wrong if we view the mind/body as a holistic system. Descartes’ Error is an interesting book that has probably (in a small way) contributed to my understanding of neuroscience and neurobiology. The book frustrated me by being too complex in places, but on the whole was accessible enough to follow in general and I did enjoy reading it. Domasio has attempted to contribute a challenging perspective to the study of neuroscience, and to some extent, by focusing on human feeling, I think he has succeeded. But for me, there are some glaring omissions that prevent this book from being a classic. A philosophical perspective on life’s bigger questions is lacking througout, and the crucial question about whether or not God exists barely gets a mention. If God does exist, there are clear implications for neuroscience and scientific endeavour in general, and these considerations have been completely overlooked by Domasio. For instance, if God is responsible for human thought, by creating our minds anew in every moment, then we will never find out how the mind works by focusing on the physical dimension of the self; we need to explore the spiritual – the way God and humans interact – for illumination. This has been a subject of philosophical speculation for thousands of years, and opinion is radically divided, but I have no doubt that these considerations are the primary ones we should be addressing in our quest to understand the human self.

Do you believe thought is linked to the human body?

What do you believe emotions are?

Is God relevant to neuroscience?

If you wish to read more from Steven or respond to any of the points raised above you can access his blog here.

Book Review by Steven Colborne: ‘Happier’ by Tal Ben-Shahar

admin — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:03:14 +0000

I have recently finished reading the book Happier by Harvard lecturer and psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar. The book was of interest to me as it discusses the nature of happiness, and how we can achieve greater levels of happiness in our lives. This is a subject to which I have dedicated a great deal of thought in recent weeks, as I have attempted to adjust the happiness balance in my own life.

One might well approach the reading of such a book with a sceptical attitude. The self help market is flooded with titles that propose to offer solutions to the problems in life that cause us to be unhappy. Many of these books (and I’m thinking of Paul McKenna, but there are many others) can be rather shallow, offering no real solutions to the problem of unhappiness.

I was grateful, then, that Happier is well written and presents some intelligent ideas about how we can experience more of what the author calls ‘the ultimate currency’. There is an emphasis on creating more time in our lives for meaningful activity, and we are encouraged, through various exercises, to explore what gives meaning to our lives and how we can live in a more meaningful way. One of the ways in which we can do this is by managing our time well and focusing on activities that offer both present and future benefit. We should be setting goals that inspire us and that are valuable, and then taking steps towards those goals in our daily lives that are satisfying. The emphasis, time and time again, is on doing things that are meaningful; this really is the heart of what Tal Ben-Shahar has to say.

We are also offered the rather obvious advice that pursuing wealth and status does not lead to a happy life. I say ‘obvious’, but if the author is right then people who pursue these things are abundant in society. I can believe it as well – one of the pitfalls of capitalism is that it tends to nurture such an attitude. The author tells a familiar story about how so many of us become ‘rat racers’, always pursuing future goals that we think will make us happy, but leave us feeling empty as it happens. This attitude is ingrained in us from our school days, when we stress ourselves out over deadlines and exams, being more intently focused on achieving top grades than enjoying the journey of learning. We carry forward this attitude into the workplace in adult life, when we stress instead about promotions and pay rises. We are all the time struggling to achieve things, but never finding happiness in the process.

As well as ‘rat racers’, the author describes other character types, including nihilists and hedonists, for whom true happiness is elusive. The nihilist is someone who has become resigned to unhappiness, and the hedonist seeks fulfillment in fleeting pleasures, which can never be sustained. We are all said to have elements of all these character types in us, but the key question is: How do we allign our lives so that they are conducive to the optimum level of happiness?

In solving this problem, the key word for me (and it is a word that the author perhaps uses too little) is balance. If I had written Happier I would be stressing how the happy life has to have many ingredients that must come into harmony, including friendships, diet, work life, hobbies, intimacy, exercise, and more. I would perhaps take a more ‘holistic’ approach to happiness than the author has done. Don’t get me wrong, the author discusses an array of factors that contribute to happiness, but for me the balancing of all factors – essential to a happy life – is not focused on enough.

Happier, then, is a book that is easy and satisfying to read, and that offers some useful discussion regarding how to increase our happiness levels. It doesn’t go into great depth about psychology, but is intentionally simple and accessible to a popular audience. At the very least, this is an enjoyable read. At most, it could change your life in a significant way, and help you to achieve greater levels of ‘the ultimate currency’ as you strive for a happier and more fulfilling life.

This Book Review was taken from the blog of Steven Colborne. It can be viewed here: http://perfectchaos.org/2012/02/06/happier-by-tal-ben-shahar-book-review/

The Reclassification of Grief

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:51:10 +0000

The latest discussion about the revisions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the handbook for identifying and classifying mental illnesses and disorders) has led me to this question: When did a normal, emotional human experience become classified as a mental health disorder?

Under the revision is the reclassification of bereavement as a form of depression and the legitimisation of treatment for grief with anti-depressants. The consequence: anti-depressants will to be more readily prescribed to help people cope just two weeks after the death of a loved one.

There are few people I know who have not had to cope with the loss of a loved one. It can be a confusing, lonely and overwhelming experience. But grief is a very natural process and one that all experience throughout our lives. Responses to the death of someone close to us will affect each person in a very different way. It is a process which should never be given a time limit. And it should never be suppressed or eliminated.

Taking all this into account, it surprises me that it is deemed appropriate to prescribe medication to help someone cope with a bereavement.

It is, of course, a different story if someone has a history of depression or if they suffer from a prolonged period of grief. But, even then, recourse to medication should be avoided. What people need most from doctors is time and compassion. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, making the prescription of medication a ‘quick-fix’ approach.

As hard and as difficult as the process of grieving may be, I am a firm believer that people need to do it without the aide of medication.

We should be experiencing our emotions, not hiding from them.

Yoga and Mental Health

admin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:18:07 +0000

Regular yoga, meditation and relaxation techniques have long been recommended as complementary therapy for mental healthcare patients. This is because they are techniques which work holistically, improving physical, mental and emotional health as a whole.

Our mental and emotional health governs all other bodily functions and processes, making it of upmost importance to living a healthy, happy life.

Various studies have shown that regular yoga practise reduces and improves a person’s levels of stress, depression, anxiety, energy levels and fatigue. It helps with the release of chemicals in the body and brain which promote strength and well being.

One of the main objectives of yoga as a therapy is to bring about emotional self-control. We can sometimes be overcome by our emotions, which in turn de-stabilises the nervous system and causes us to lose clarity and control over ourselves. Yoga postures help boost oxygen and blood flow around the body, taking care of the body and organ functioning. Together with breath and balancing techniques, yoga will improve the cognitive functions of the brain, calming the mind and allowing a clearer, different perspective.

The further physical benefits of relieving stiffness, aches and pains also allow a person to feel much more relaxed which contributes to more positive mental and emotional attitude. With practice, we can more successfully control our emotional responses and proactively influence our own lives.

Yoga classes will help facilitate personal growth, a person’s sense of purpose, self acceptance through self-awareness and aid the discovery of a strength to influence one’s own situation in life. As well as the direct physical and psychological benefits, yoga classes bring an opportunity for people to socialise on a regular basis. By encouraging social interaction, boosting confidence and self-esteem the people attending will be able to enhance their relationships, both with themselves and others around them.

Carolina Smilas

Carolina will be running yoga classes with residents of a mental healthcare facility, funded by TransmissionUK.